There’s recently been some discussion on TameBay as to whether merchants should offer PayPal on their websites. The main choices available to online retailers are: Credit/Debit card through a merchant account, PayPal, Nochex and Google Checkout.
Today a new Ipsos Public Affairs poll conducted on behalf of PayPal was released with some interesting stats:
- Among online merchants who are able to track their sales say sales have increased an average of 18% since adding PayPal’s Express Checkout service.
- Eight in ten (83%) merchants have noticed a bump in sales, while just 17% say they haven’t noticed an increase.
- Since offering PayPal, merchants claim that 22% of their total revenue comes from PayPal’s Express Checkout.
- 25% of revenue coming from new customers is channeled through PayPal’s Express Checkout.
- Merchants perceive that their clients appreciate the option of paying with PayPal, with almost nine in ten (86%) merchants believing that their buyers “appreciate” the option.
The poll was carried out in the US with 805 PayPal merchants surveyed. Whilst there may be a slight bias in that it only included merchants already offering PayPal the results are still significant.
The best advice when deciding which payment methods to accept is, as ever, to offer a choice which is why companies such as Domino’s Pizza are starting to accept PayPal. What suits one customer won’t necessarily suit another and definitely offering PayPal without an option to pay by credit/debit card wouldn’t make sense.
PayPal might not be your first choice for accepting payments, but if it will potentially account for up to a quarter of your total payments it’s become too entrenched as a choice for buyers not to offer it.
16 Responses
My opinion would be to offer it as there is a lot of money sitting in Paypal accounts waiting to be spent.
However, if you have a prestige brand, which to be honest I would guess few of us on here have, then I wouldn’t offer it.
Paypal is the Skoda of the payment processor world, trying hard to change it’s image but, well, it’s still a Skoda.
From a buyers perspective, Paypal is easy and most people know the name. From a merchants POV (mine for example) they are a pain in the a$$…
I still don’t offer Paypal as I personally feel they are political with the Wikileaks thing. Plus Google Checkout and Nochex are cheaper alternatives for me to use. And no I wouldn’t use them to buy a pizza with.
I accept paypal and think it would be silly not to accept it and agree with BigPoppa’s point that there is a lot of money sitting in paypal accounts that people would like to spend.
I don’t take that many payments through paypal though. Most customers pay with a card. Possibly the proportion of customers using paypal would increase if I used the “paypal express check out” but I’m not convinced that it would greatly raise the overall conversion rate (at present paypal customers still need to complete our own check out).
In my opinion the well being of paypal is largely dependant on eBay. If there was no eBay there would be no reason for paypal.
We offer Paypal on all our websites, it is a must in my opinion!
We offered google checkout on our biggest website, hardly any sales and a £250 charge back even though I could prove it was signed for by the customer! Google checkout service is even worse than Paypal so imagine how bad that is…..!
If nothing else Paypal is another mark of trust in your website!
its buyers make who this decision not the seller, if buyers want it ,and its profitable, the question answers itself
PayPal are the best, they rock.
I’ve had a few blowouts at Checkout, and as I’m brassic and out numbered I’ll add Paypal but I won’t use a graphic on my website to advertise the fact as I don’t want to cheapen my brand.
I use paypal on my website because a lot of my customers have gone awol from ebay.
If I did not rely on ebay for a substantial slice of my sales I doubt paypal would come into the equation.
I agree with bigPoppa, the skoda analogy is apt and we all understand it even if it does annoy Chris and other Skoda drivers.
Tamebay – any chance of summerising the paypal changes that have been announced?
Thanks
An 18% increase is quoted, but is this because it’s Paypal or simply because it’s another payment option for customers? Isn’t it likely that adding Google Checkout, for example, would see a similar increase?
I trade in a high risk area – mobile phones – and sacked ebay after 8 years because of the high number of scammers using Paypal (and ebay), and more importantly Paypal’s “not really our problem” apathy towards the issue so I would be extremely reluctant to ‘invite’ these people to buy from my website.